Exceptions come around in Perl usually in the form of signals. Generally, Perl code return "bad" values from functions instead of generating "exceptions". (Exceptions come around in C++ and Java among others.)

OOB (out of band data) generally generates a signal (unless you turn that off) and is placed in a high-part of the TCP/UDP data being sent. It was designed for "emergency" information but it remains generally unused in everyday apps. It can be used for anything you wish if you know how to throw some OOB data together, send it, and capture it. Otherwise, you get SIGURG (urgent) and bomb. Do the RIPE/WHOIS servers actually use that? I wasn't aware of that.

M$ History Lesson of the Day: A few years back, it was discovered that many ports on a Windows machine choked on OOB data, causing anything from a full system lockup to a BSOD. Hence, winnuke was born, which was essentially 3 lines of real code. Thanks, M$!

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